Summary

This brief rhetoric focuses on the key strategies that any academic writer needs to know -- summary, synthesis, analysis, and critique. Building off of the hallmark writing instruction of the best-selling Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, this writing guide focuses on the critical reading and writing strategies that students need in order to thoughtfully interpret and incorporate source material into their own papers. The text employs high-interest readings from a range of disciplines to allow students to practice these strategies and skills, while numerous student papers model the kinds of academic texts that students are expected to produce.

Table of Contents

Preface for Instructors

Note to the Student

Part One: Structures

Chapter 1—Summary, Paraphrase, and Quotation

What Is a Summary?

The Reading Process

How to Write Summaries

Will Your Job Be Exported?—Alan S. Blinder

Summarizing Figures and Tables

Paraphrase

Quotations

Avoiding Plagiarism

The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln—Doris Kearns Goodwin

Chapter 2—Critical Reading and Critique

Critical Reading

The Moon We Left Behind Charles Krauthammer

Critique

Model Critique: A Critique of ”The Moon We Left Behind” by Charles Krauthammer—Andrew Harlan

The Common App Fallacy—Damon Beres

Chapter 3—Explanatory Synthesis

What Is a Synthesis?

Explanation: News Article from the New York Times

While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales—Michael Moss

Argument: Op-Ed from the Boston Globe

Got Too Much Cheese?—Derrick Z. Jackson

How to Write Syntheses

The Explanatory Synthesis

The History of the Space Elevator—P. K. Aravind

Applications of the Space Elevator—Bradley C. Edwards

Going Up—Brad Lemley

Why We Need a Space Elevator—Cathy Swan and Peter Swan

Model Paper: The Space Elevator—Sheldon Kearney

Chapter 4—Argument Synthesis

What Is an Argument Synthesis?

Demonstration: Developing an Argument Synthesis—Balancing Privacy and Safety in the Wake of Virginia Tech